Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Assorted Reading

I've been forcing myself to set aside time for personal reading. It's tough, as my days and nights are filled with work, family and Guild Wars. Still, I've managed to get though a few things in the past few months.
I just finished Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I read it (along with most of H's other books) about 20 years ago, and it's still good! Hemingway's great for a quick read. It's brutal, like a jab to the ribs, without a lot of subtext. I felt hung over when it was done.
I started and finally finished Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. It took me a while to really get into it -- it starts slowly. By the time I was 2/3 through it started to pick up. What I had to learn is that it is one of Dickens' two historical novels. This means that the pacing and characters are not what you'd find in David Copperfield or Great Expectations. When I finished it last week, I was just grateful to be through it (like I was with Anna Karenina a few months ago, a book it's taken me a solid decade to read). As I've been thinking about it (and reading a bit of criticism), I'm coming to appreciate it more. It's ending is almost ethereal, you almost feel as if you are Sydney Carton.
Right now I'm reading Joseph Girzone's Joshua, a modern-day parable of Christ's return to a small American town. It's very profound and a quick read. I'm liking it a lot.
On the non-fiction front, I'm getting back into John Keegan's The First World War. I'm a big fan of his WWII history (and think it's the best one-volume history of that war to be had). It's tough going in the early pages, but I'm getting through. It's my car book at the moment, meaning I read it when I'm in restaurants alone.
What are you reading??

1 comment:

evaberry said...

I wish I had more time to read... I was just reading about someone (mentioned in the book 84 Charing Cross Road, I believe) who used to get up an hour early every day just so she could get some reading done. If only I managed to get up at 5:30 to do that... At the moment I guess I spend all day reading and writing and then I don't really get enough sleep, so when I finally get into bed I only manage about 2-3 pages before crashing. A year or so ago I banned myself from buying any more books before I read through all the ones I already have, and I don't think I've reduced my reading pile by very much!

Oh well, maybe someday... Hemingway is definitely someone I need to get stuck into when I get some time. On the must-read list...